The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, August 11, 1901, Page 2

By Rev. John A. Lally. A ORA NA TAHITI"—that was the song our hearts were singing on the morning of' June these who were going down to the sea in the great ship Australia: To be sure, most of the company -had never heard the words nor knew their meaning, but among us there were some who had been born and bred in fair Tahiti, and others there were—it seemed from every race and clime—who had dwelt there for years, and their intense longing for home, their enthusiasm about their lovely island paradise passed soon to stranger hearts and ears, and so not many days out the spell and fascination of this pearl of the Pacific was upon us all; thus it was that our song was ’-and the music melted all hearts 26—the hearts of the burden o The Fourth of July was passed in mid- ocean, and you may be sure we did not forget to put in prayer and praise and speech and patriotic anthem the story of our country’s. glory. other Americans may haye had more elab- but surely none that were entered into with more spirit nor brought with them a more realizing sense of what American citizenship ~ with blessings and duties meant. Judge Knight of Los Angeles entertained and edified us “Tollers of the Sea’ with a speech thaf, entirely impromptu, was really remarka- ble for its beauty and eloquence and yet The afternoon was spent hurricane deck, where a pro- gramme of games, both for ladies gerntlemen, caused much enthusiasm and And so the day morning of July 6 we found ourselyes in_ the harbor of Nukahiva, the principal island of the Marquesas, waiting for the pilot and physician, not a cloud between us. and the heavens; the faint odor of the land stealing out to us from the tropic island, the music of the surges tossing_on the beach. C wered and manned and in a short time were landed on the shores of lovely _Aikahiva. The white coral sand shone vike bits of broken glass, and down to ocean’s very edge row upon row of stately cocoa palms reared their graceful heads to heaven. These, interspersed with rose- sandalwood, breadfruit, mangoes, guavas and other strange and wondrously beautiful forms of tropic veg- etation made real a land hitherto we had only dreamed of and seen in painted orate celebrations, simple dignity. § went by, delightfully Boats were soon ‘We had six hours on shore, and during that time saw something of the natives. We also called upon the sisterhood, who are laboriously striving to teach young ‘“savages” the ways and graces of Christianity. ~And indeed theirs is an up- 1f Chwristlan faith and could be loosed from so-called civilization and from many of its expo- aents-as found in these peaceful isles all might be well with the missionaries and their neophytes. dining with "Mons}, Apostolic of the an apostolic life, and a more kindly, tle and hospitable shepherd of his. one would scarce wish to see. ed us of some such scene in the life of one of the apostles to watch Christian Bishop, In his poverty and sweet and without one word of apol- is slender larder and poorly hed banqueting hall, th his own consecrated han dinner for those who were so favored as d the honor of or Martin, the Vicar _The_episcopal 'palace,” the cathedral, 1 N FRoNT OF THE' TIOWAY nuns’ residence and girls’ school nestl together and form a froup of buildin, situated on a rising slope amid a den: tropic grove. - To be sure, for one who b lleves in Jesus Christ and his divine mis- sion as the Savior of man, and in the ne- cessity of Christian baptism as a neces- sary condition of the soul's salvation, there can be no question that the lives of men like Bishop Martin and his brethren certainly have not been in vain. This is the purely spiritual point of view. Unfor- tunately there is another—the purely ma- teria® view—as it affects the earthly lives and fortunes and destinies of these gentle South Sea Islanders, and from this merely material point of view there comes a ter- rible indictment of ‘“modern Christian civilization.” "It is one of the saddest, saddest stories ever told. Thirty years ago there were upward of forty thousand souls in the Marquesas group of islands. Now diseases, new to these lands, and in- troduced vice in varied forms and death have done their work and there remains but a shadow of a race—only four thou- sand. Truly a terrible record! And only God himself, when he shall judge the race of Adam, can mete out justice to those who are and have been responsible for the outrage. The aged and last Queen of the:Mar- quesas had just been buried shortly before our arrival, but we were graciously re- ceived in royal abode by ‘some of ‘her weeping handmaidens with gentle dignity and guileless hospitality. Each -one was given some souvenir of her Majesty, who in life, so the Bishop informed us, was a sincerely practical Catholic. L'g to a short time ago, when it was prohibited, the natives of both sexes made a practice of tattooing, and so many of them are still adorned in that way—the men generally across their faces, the wo- men on their hands. And it seems that they do this to beautify themselves, and render themselves attractive to the oppo- site sex. To civilized eyes, of course, it makes them merely hideous—but perhaps not more so than do the methods of some of our own ‘“beauty doctors'—for surely the standards of beauty are varled and Wondrous queer. We were to haye taken with us Some- thing like 250 native Marquesans, but either from mismanagement or misunder- standing they were not allowed to come with us; but they did the next best thing, for, tricked out in all the glory of “Mother Hubbards” and blac suits, they sang and danced for us on the beach. And then, laden with tropic fruits of every varlety, we made our way back to the steamer, all of us delighted with our first experience in a tropic land—not quite sure,, however, ‘but that we had been tricked, and had been attending a per- formance of “Sinbad the Sailor,” with Norman and his little cannibals’ singing “The Bogie Man.” Soon we were under way for Tahiti—two and a half days’ steaming. Our second Sunday out found us sailing close to the “dangerous Archipelago” or Paumotu group of islands. They are a low-lying serles of coral reefs, with beaches of glittering white sand, covered with dense tropic vegetation. Stoddard, describing them, says: ‘“They are the very hotbed of cocoanut oil, pearls, half-famished Kan- akas, shells and shipwrecks.” These islands passed, our way la?’ direct to Tahiti, And on the morning of July 9 we were safe and sound at our journey's .end. Amid a glorious sunrise, such as is only seen in these Southern’ seas, en- chanting and bewitching Tahiti rises to our view, bathed in sunshine; its three- peaked center, cloud-capped and myste- rious—with its encircling reef of coral, and the waves dashing into spray over the white edges. Back of us, nine miles dis- tant, the mists of the morning still cling- to its myriad peaks, stood out in beld in| nfic&mo,m'fll_‘qgnd of Mootec., ®ilated THE Q0K Z5IANDS® through the narrow opening in the coral reef, and gazing through Interlacing forests of cocoa palms and endless vistas of green, we could see the cross-sur mounted steeple of the cathedral, the tower of the former royal palace, and the Eovernment houses of the French oifi- clals. As'we drew near to the Oceaniq wharf, it would seem as if gathered thers was the whole population, native and otherwise—the women clothed in all the colors of the rainbow and in all the fashions_that have come and gone since Mother Eve first wove for herself a gar- ment of leaves. All this in the funny little town of Papeete, the seat and center of French authority, civil and ecclesiastical, in all these islands. Our physician having reported a clean bill of health, we were permitted to plant our feet on terra firma, and then began ten days of uninterrupted pleasure and bewildering sightseeing. The principal street of Papeete is La Petite Pologne, which on one side runs to the ocean’s very -edge, taken up with shops 'and clubhouses, Government and on_this particular morning and women of every tongue and tribe under heaven. Here we Americans gained our first les- sons on the “strenuous life,” as it is un- derstood in the tropics. Some among us wished to make' a few necessary ‘chases, 80 we wended our way to the other being owned and contrelled by a company, the only one in T: hour was 10:30 a. m., the doors were wide open, the clerks—some of them at any rate—standing outside. wishes and we could bu noon. At first we took it as soon realized that it was Everybody who was anybody b breakfast at 10 a. m. and all work had ceased until after 12. 'The business hours are.from 7 a. m. until 10 a. m.—two hours for breakfast—and work from 12 m. until 5 p. m., when everything is clo: night. That beats the 6 o'clc movement of the States to a f The remainder of the day walking about through the ways and lanes of this ci The streets are save now and then an occas chant coming from native th which native rum had lent enthusia , for, although this was only July 9 and the “fete”” did not begin until July 14, the gla- mour and the promise of it was already in the hearts of the natives, and, like happy children of other climes, they were begin- ning a bit early to enjoy its many pleas- ures and, alas, its too great freedom and license. We notice that the natives all go barefooted, men and women ke. The men are clothed in a long strip of thin cloth dyed in contrasting colors of white and red and blue and orange. This is called a ‘“pareu,” and falls in graceful folds from the waist line to the knees, the upper and lower portions of their bare, bronze, shiny bodies being nude. Their heads, covered with a thick growth of black hair worn short, are topped oft with- a hat of any description—in fact, “any old thing,” so long as it is a hat. The native women wear the Mother Hubbard gown, and anything more un- graceful and better calculated to hide the beauty of the “female form divine” was never invented, even by missionaries. The female portion of the population seem to have caught some idea of its utter hide- ousness, and so strive to even up things by having their ‘glad rags,” as one American irreverently styled them, made of cloth more or less expensive and be- flounced_and befrilled and trimmed with lace and ribbon. The very up-to-date among them wear a jaunty sailor hat, turvy v nots: ele: poised_upon their well greased heads and FRLACE OO ZSLANDERS fastened, if you please, with a gorgeous hatpin of prismatic glass. And in some quarters the mducmfi of these poor na- tives to thus clothe themselves passes for civilization. Other women who are as yet still near to nature’s heart despise this headgear crown themselves with garlands of frangipani and hibiscus flow- ers, which here attain the dimensions of a saucer. ears they entwine with other melling blossoms. But all d to the Mother Hub- would seem irrevocably. r sex are entirely Ul from con e reason that s y_going barefooted their feet are flat and exceedingly broad, and boots to fit would have something the size of their own ¢ outline—d Frequently y with but less graceful In you see a Mother Hubbard one or two yards of a train and s the women carry these “court tra over t arms and so save wear and tear and avold blinding their neigh- bors with dust and poisoning them with microbes. Fancy smfort these South a ladles, h thoughtful- ness concerning the ravages of the “dead- ly microbe,” would be to the Oakland Supervisor who strove to put the ban on trailing skirts! Thus virtue is its own reward and even Oakland was re- membered in our wanderings in the South Seas. Other du maidens there were, however. And ed to have Htter: cone “microbe fad, sights under t go sailing by, bare-footed and their long trains gather- ing up the dust like a city street sweep- nd seemingly as self-satis- been the good en she appeared before Solo- 1 and magnificence of ative women some of us hused with rum n of their own Ju ly appeared X times and places, clothed in Mother Hubbards of intense purple and with regulation trains. The 1t of us seemed to make them stark 1 and immediately they would begin eadily to the weird move- eir native dance. The only explanation of t dwinter” madness we could offer was possibly they had goné daft over one or other of the hand- some gentlemen of our party. The natives, as a whole, are a simple, ly le race—positively handsome in many cases—with their souls, withous guile or pretense, looking at you from the depths of coal black eyes—eyes that would give beauty and distincti ordinary fac moral and p = their fine proportion and defacing their bodily comelines: However, they are still a race that artists and lovers of the body beautiful can yet enthuse over— with their intensely black hair, pearly teeth, broad noses and copper oolored complexion and without a trace of the conventi savage In their tenderly exe pressive faces. From what we could learn from high class half-castes and unprejudiced Euroe peans the pure native makes no pretense of practicing sexual morality. In other times, so we were told, it was not so. Many Europeans resident in those islands tandard of living, and the ve caught the moral con= 4 strive to imitate those whomy they consider their betters. And so laxity in the decencles of life has terribly in- creased in later years. Marriage laws are ignored or not enforced, and many of the natives have reduced the relationship of the sexes to the manners and customs of the poultry yard. To see a rative reeling drunk is no exe WERE cAllaee-